Would the concept of gender, as opposed to sex, be considered gnostic? I am not confident about what constitutes gnosticism, but I think I have read that it embraces a degraded view of the material world including the physical bodies of human beings. The Christian perspective does seem to confirm a hierarchy of constituent parts (that is, the soul is more important than the body), but it also asserts the integration of body and soul as fundamental to out nature as human beings and teaches us that both are good. If the division of a person's sex from his feeling of his sexed social role is indeed a form of gnosticism, how did Christians combat this heresy with arguments that could be followed and accepted by non-Christians?
It would depend on "gender" is interpreted. We should simple hold that gender is the social expression of biological sex. When people refer to an idea as "Gnostic," they generally mean version of dualism that holds that the body is bad and the soul good, with the body as essentially the prison of the soul. What this means is that the body isn't really an important part of us; it's basically a suit of clothes. Worse, the body can even hold us back from realizing our true identities.
Applied to the transgender movement, calling trangenderism gnostic represents the idea that the real me isn't my body, so I can change my body just like I would change a suit of clothes.
Christians have typically followed Aquinas in holding that the soul if the form of the body, that the soul and body form an integrated person. Saying that the real you is just the soul (and not the body) runs into some weird implausible consequences. If my body isn't me, and is just a suit of clothes then my wife has never kissed me, assault becomes a property crime (you didn't hit me, only my body), and perhaps the government could even take a kidney from me in taxation (since my body isn't the real me or part of the real me).
You do not have to continue to respond, if the thread becomes tedious. I thought your response was good. Do you think, then, that what needs to be established is that the bodies of the people who are seeking transformation are actually healthy as they are? It seems right that medical procedures can be performed to help what is ill or lacking to become well and whole. The form of the soul is not corrupted or misinterpreted by such procedures (within limits). People with gender dysphoria seem to believe that their bodies are not conforming to the forms of their souls -- so do you think that the point of argument should be: "no, you err because your bodies are, in fact, healthy? Your members are not diseased; your features are not misshapen?" If this is so, how do we persuade towards a consensus of what health is?
The former head of the College of American Pediatricians put it something like this: the job of brain is to perceive reality. A person really is, biologically, either male or female. When a female perceives herself as male, then her brain is not perceiving reality. This is, in psychological terms, a delusion, a fixed belief held, in spite of strong evidence to the contrary. Just like a skinny girl may perceive herself as overweight is operating under a delusion (her brain is not correctly perceiving reality), a girl who perceives herself as a boy is operating under a similar delusion. And the duty of physicians is not to act on the basis of that delusion. A doctor is not (or should not be) a "hired syringe."
I don't think people with gender dysphoria really think in terms of being souls in the wrong body; they're not thinking it through that carefully. I think, to some extent, they're often in some emotion distress for other reasons, and see this as an easy answer and an easy way out of their problems.
Would the concept of gender, as opposed to sex, be considered gnostic? I am not confident about what constitutes gnosticism, but I think I have read that it embraces a degraded view of the material world including the physical bodies of human beings. The Christian perspective does seem to confirm a hierarchy of constituent parts (that is, the soul is more important than the body), but it also asserts the integration of body and soul as fundamental to out nature as human beings and teaches us that both are good. If the division of a person's sex from his feeling of his sexed social role is indeed a form of gnosticism, how did Christians combat this heresy with arguments that could be followed and accepted by non-Christians?
It would depend on "gender" is interpreted. We should simple hold that gender is the social expression of biological sex. When people refer to an idea as "Gnostic," they generally mean version of dualism that holds that the body is bad and the soul good, with the body as essentially the prison of the soul. What this means is that the body isn't really an important part of us; it's basically a suit of clothes. Worse, the body can even hold us back from realizing our true identities.
Applied to the transgender movement, calling trangenderism gnostic represents the idea that the real me isn't my body, so I can change my body just like I would change a suit of clothes.
Christians have typically followed Aquinas in holding that the soul if the form of the body, that the soul and body form an integrated person. Saying that the real you is just the soul (and not the body) runs into some weird implausible consequences. If my body isn't me, and is just a suit of clothes then my wife has never kissed me, assault becomes a property crime (you didn't hit me, only my body), and perhaps the government could even take a kidney from me in taxation (since my body isn't the real me or part of the real me).
You do not have to continue to respond, if the thread becomes tedious. I thought your response was good. Do you think, then, that what needs to be established is that the bodies of the people who are seeking transformation are actually healthy as they are? It seems right that medical procedures can be performed to help what is ill or lacking to become well and whole. The form of the soul is not corrupted or misinterpreted by such procedures (within limits). People with gender dysphoria seem to believe that their bodies are not conforming to the forms of their souls -- so do you think that the point of argument should be: "no, you err because your bodies are, in fact, healthy? Your members are not diseased; your features are not misshapen?" If this is so, how do we persuade towards a consensus of what health is?
The former head of the College of American Pediatricians put it something like this: the job of brain is to perceive reality. A person really is, biologically, either male or female. When a female perceives herself as male, then her brain is not perceiving reality. This is, in psychological terms, a delusion, a fixed belief held, in spite of strong evidence to the contrary. Just like a skinny girl may perceive herself as overweight is operating under a delusion (her brain is not correctly perceiving reality), a girl who perceives herself as a boy is operating under a similar delusion. And the duty of physicians is not to act on the basis of that delusion. A doctor is not (or should not be) a "hired syringe."
I don't think people with gender dysphoria really think in terms of being souls in the wrong body; they're not thinking it through that carefully. I think, to some extent, they're often in some emotion distress for other reasons, and see this as an easy answer and an easy way out of their problems.